West Bank fights back against Israeli attacks

A retaliation to Israel’s biggest military operation inside the West Bank in two decades was to be expected, and, sure enough, it didn’t take long.

Earlier today, a 20-year-old Palestinian man drove straight into pedestrians standing at a bus stop outside a shopping centre in Tel Aviv, injuring seven people, before being shot and killed by an armed civilian after he got out of his pickup truck and tried to stab those around him. The young man, believed to be part of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, did not have a permit to enter Israel. Palestinians in the West Bank require a permit to enter Israel, for example, for work. 

The attack, which comes as Israeli security forces press on with their raid on the Jenin refugee camp, has been described by Hamas as a “natural response to the ongoing massacre of our people.”

Ten Palestinians have been killed and at least 120 injured since hundreds of Israeli troops launched their operation in the early hours of Monday, supported by drone strikes and armoured bulldozers. British MP Rishi Sunak has urged the Israel Defence Forces to “demonstrate restraint in its operation,” adding “the protection of civilians must be prioritised.”

The camp, in the north of the occupied West Bank, was set up for Palestinians displaced during the time of Israel’s creation. Jenin is under the control of militant groups, who have mounted dozens of attacks from the camp, hence Israel’s insistence that its own “targeted” strikes are part of an “extensive counter-terrorism effort.”

Palestinians, meanwhile, have labelled their actions an “invasion” and “new war crime”. 

The densely populated refugee camp is home to over 14,000 people living in an area of just 0.16 square miles, making it difficult to launch a targeted attack. 

The Palestinian Red Crescent says its crews have evacuated 3,000 people – including patients and the elderly – from the camp to hospitals. And the WHO has said that emergency health teams have been blocked from entering Jenin to treat the injured, with reports that at least two hospitals have “experienced attacks”.

According to the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), multiple roads leading to Jenin have also been destroyed by military bulldozers, making it nearly impossible for ambulances to reach patients. Some Palestinian paramedics have proceeded on foot, in an area with active gunfire and drone strikes.

The Jenin raid follows a recent surge in violence in the West Bank. According to the latest UN figures, which don’t include this most recent spate of fighting, Israeli forces have killed 114 Palestinians in the territory this year, while Palestinians have killed 16 Israelis. If this alarming rate of casualties continues, the UN has warned that 2023 is set to be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since its records began in 2004. And the last two weeks has seen Israel deploy helicopter gunships and armed drones over the West Bank for the first time since the Palestinian uprising, known as the second intifada, in the early 2000s. Over 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis died during this time. 

The attack in Tel Aviv today is also a reminder that escalating violence in response to the Jenin operation won’t just be felt within the West Bank. 

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